'Guinness World Records 2014': for that truly strange and fun info

The compilation contains bizarre nuggets information such as the first child to be mailed via the U.S. Postal Service was a boy in 1913, sent from his parents to his grandparents, a mile away.

If certain books are like feasts, “Guinness World Records 2014” is like potato chips.

That’s not a bad thing. Most of us love potato chips.

And just as it is impossible to eat one chip, it’s impossible to open up this year’s edition and read just one entry.

Admittedly, and for reasons I am not proud of, I began with the “Human Body” section.

Here we find the “most modified married couple” which means Victor Hugo Peralta of Uruguay and his wife Gabriela from Argentina have, between them, 50 piercings, 11 body implants and one forked tongue. There probably is a square inch that is not tattooed, but be grateful for small gifts – it is not shown.

There is Elaine Davidson of Brazil and the U.K., who has been pierced more than 4,225 times just since 2000.

For more dinner-table appropriate conversation, there’s an item about the first shopping mall. And though it should have been in New Jersey, it was in ancient Rome built between 100 and 112 AD. It had about 150 stores with offices above gallery levels.

In North Yorkshire, England, a candy shop that opened in 1827 is still selling sweets.

And the closest to anything chip-related was that the largest ever nachos, which weighed in at 4,689 pounds and were made at the University of Kansas April 21, 2012. No word on the largest amount of guilt that came after eating that.